


The baby whisperer

by MrsOkita



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics), Super Sons (Comics), Superman (Comics)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Fluff without Plot, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Soft Damian Wayne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24655498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsOkita/pseuds/MrsOkita
Summary: Apparently Dick and Barbara’s baby girl has a soft spot for Damian.Jon can relate. Richard finds it amusing.Or The Tale of Damian Wayne, the Favorite Uncle (Not a Babysitter)
Relationships: Jon Lane Kent/Damian Wayne, Jonathan Kent/Damian Wayne
Comments: 17
Kudos: 350





	The baby whisperer

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn’t intending for this fic to turn out so soft, but oh well, look where that got me.
> 
> And if I’m making Damian Wayne’s life miserable, it’s purely out of love.

It happened by chance one day. Grayson was at the Batcave, long past 2 a.m. in the morning. Both he and Damian were accompanying at distance Batman and Batgirl around Iceberg Lounge, while they were trying to sneak in at some weird scheme of money laundry the Penguin was up to.

It wouldn’t be nothing out of ordinary for the family if it wasn’t for Grayson, full on his Nightwing costume, talking to Batman through one of the large computer screens while holding a crying six months baby girl on his lap.

Damian could explain. Richard Grayson and Barbara Gordon had decided to not get married, like, ever, because, according to her, marriages were institutions in decay that served to oppress people; however, she had said yes when Dick asked her to just _be_ with him, and that led to a couple of years of living together until they decided it would be a good idea to have a baby.

It probably was, at short run. Barbara had a lot of resistance, her strongest characteristic, to hold her urge of patrolling cities while pregnant. When baby Lily was born, a little girl with Dick’s hair and Barbara’s eyes, the whole family was actually touched. Jason made such a mess on the hospital the nurses kicked him out, and Alfred possibly fought off a tear when he held her and said:

“She’s beautiful, master Richard”.

She was, indeed. And now she was six months into the mess of the world, that still rolled with crime, and injustice, and madness, not caring that a human being still so young and so defenseless was just born. Barbara had stayed too long out of that chaos, back to work full time as Oracle as her pregnancy developed, so when she asked to be again on field for only one night, _please_ , they had to make adjustments.

It was curious how having something to protect other than themselves made people think from another perspective. While before it would be okay to just trust Barbara to go and do her work as vigilant that she was always so good at, now it seemed a risk, because how could they purely trust the odds that nothing bad would happen and Lily would end up without her mother?

So there was this whole scheme. Barbara didn’t like much, of course, but she compromised. Batman went along with her, Richard had the baby, and Damian was a backup, in case they needed one. Damian didn’t like much being a backup either, but he let it go for Barbara and her night of having a taste of the life she chose to live.

When Batgirl entered a very dark room by the back of Iceberg Lounge, the connecting faltered, the computer screen sizzling with undefined grey stripes. Nightwing altered his voice for a urgent tone,

“Wait, wait, I’m losing you here”. Batgirl said something back that neither he or Damian could understand, nor for the noise of the connection breaking or for Lily’s scream, crying for so long into the night that it felt like ambient sound already. “Shit, how do I even put this thing to-”

Richard started to press whatever bottom he could with his free hand that wasn’t holding Lily to his chest - her face round, and red, and full of tears. Damian was about to step in, because no one could honestly trust Grayson with anything closer to a computer, when Dick turned around to him and spoke with hurry,

“D., hold Lily quickly for a minute”.

Damian didn’t even have the time to protest; the next second he knew Richard was already pushing little Lily into his arms, and Damian had no option but to hold her to avoid letting her fall. She cried louder with the movement, making Damian have a mildly, sudden panic of not knowing what to do.

The lost connection, Barbara and his father at Iceberg Lounge, Richard pressing mindless buttons like pre-teens playing fighting video games, all seemed to vanish on the background because Damian was _holding a fucking baby._ Which he never did before on his entire twenty four years of life; not even at the hospital, when she was born.

And Lily cried like she had lost both of her parents and suddenly got orphan and had nothing but this unfitting stranger carrying her. Damian took a deep breath. Ok, he thought, he was good with animals. For all effects, Lily was an animal. Therefore, he _could_ do this. It was basic philosophical logic, aristotelian syllogism.

He shook her a bit on his arms, pressing her closer to his chest. On the distance Damian could hear Barbara’s voice saying words again, which probably meant that Richard got her back on line, but he was much focused on his task to pay more attention. If Barbara was speaking she was alive, and that was all that mattered. Now Damian had to make sure he wouldn’t kill her _daughter_ , choking on her own weep. 

After a few more balances, Lily’s cry started to subdue. Her screams lowered slowly to whimpers, and Damian took the chance to wipe her rosy cheeks from the tears that rolled. Her head rested against Damian’s chest, breath evening, and Damian made a few _sush_ sounds as her eyelids started to drop with sleepiness taking over.

There was silence, at last. Damian raised his head back to look at Richard and the computer screen. Batgirl and Batman had already all their enemies knocked down and firmly tied up, ready to be gifted at Commissioner Gordon’s front door. Nightwing was smiling at Batgirl’s image like she could see him, and Damian thought for a second how happy he truly looked just by seeing _her_ happy. Perhaps that was what love was all about.

“Just drop those guys off and come over for us to celebrate”, Damian heard Richard telling her, “We can make a candle light dinner with Lily-”

So that was when Dick stopped himself, seeming to notice something. Damian really thought he just forgot he had given his baby away for someone else to hold, but then Dick turned his head back so slowly and cautiously it was indeed strange. His eyes focused on Damian and Lily and widened like he had seen a ghost.

He whispered so low Damian barely heard,

“She’s sleeping”. And then he grinned; wide, effusively, enthusiastically. “She’s _really_ sleeping”.

Damian didn’t understand the big deal or why Richard had that marveled look on his face at all. He frowned, “Humans sleep.”

“No, no, no”, Richard approached with cautious steps, still smiling, “You don’t understand, D.”, he looked up from Lily’s peaceful sleeping face to Damian’s confused one. “What did you do?”

Damian raised one eyebrow because he… didn’t know? 

“Held her, like you asked me to?”, he answered, voice raising as a question at the end of the sentence.

“Barbara is not going to believe this”, Richard exclaimed, and it was the whisper closest to an excited yell that Damian had ever heard. When he was about to ask what was going on, really, Dick decided to explain, “Lily is no longer sleeping at night for days now. We tried everything: calming music, warming pads, chromotherapy. Nothing. We couldn’t even make her close her eyes. She just cries all the time like it’s daytime. We’re lucky that we’re used to be up at dawn, but it can get exhausting”.

So Damian looked down, still a bit confused, at the quiet, cozy baby in his arms. Her sleep was so profound her head was soft against his shoulder.

“Really?”, he asked, because it looked very unlikely comparing to what he was seeing at that moment.

“Oh, yeah, believe me”. Richard said, and by the way he moved and talked like any blunt move could wake up a deadly dragon, Damian did believe him. He smiled at Damian, then, all teeth and pride, “I guess she just likes you, uh?”

Well, Damian thought, that was a first.

* * *

He should have known that that night would have consequences. He probably did plan some possibilities, like Barbara wanting to leave again, the villains escaping and looking for revenge on Batgirl, or Richard deciding to learn how to use modern technology that wasn’t his smartphone. What Damian didn’t imagine, though, was _this_.

There was Richard and Barbara on the front door of the apartment Damian lived alone in Gotham for about four years now - spacious and well decorated, because he was a Wayne, and nothing like that thing that barely had a living room and a bedroom that Jonathan called home at Metropolis for the past two. Damian shook his head lightly with the digression, he didn’t know why he was thinking about Jon right now.

Damian looked at his wrist watch, marking two minutes past midnight, then back to Dick and Barbara and _Lily_ , on Barbara’s arms, folded in yellow, fluffy blankets, _crying_ like there was no tomorrow.

“Hi, Damian”, Barbara said in a heartbeat, like she had no time to waste. She looked a bit in despair, if he was to mention it. “Dick said you can calm her down”.

Damian _was_ shocked at that. “What?”

If anything, he never held a baby before that night at Batcave, two days ago. Any miracle that he might have worked on Lily that time was absolutely, one hundred percent by chance, not some mastered technique of parenting. He was sure he was more prone to distress her than to calm her down.

“Please, D.”, Dick said, then, and they both looked at him like he was their last hope on Earth - or on out of it, because Damian kept having flashes of remembrance of existence of aliens that night for some reason. “Can’t you help us out?”

So that’s how they ended up inside of Damian’s place, twenty or thirty minutes later, staring at silence at a soundly asleep Lily on Damian’s chest. She was even drooling a bit on the blanket, so small and _trustful_ that it was kind of overwhelming; she didn’t even wake up when Titus came over, curiously sniffing her baby powder smelling skin.

“What did I tell you?”, Richard whispered to Barbara, pointing at Damian like he wasn’t there at all.

“Yeah, that’s amazing”, she whispered back, “If she can sleep through this night we can maybe reverse her sleep cycle back to normal. Then we should move her cradle to a place where she won’t be exposed to you or me getting back home in the middle of the dawn, I’m sure that’s what’s bothering her sleep”.

Damian raised one eyebrow at that. What could _sleep through this night_ mean? They sure weren’t planning on being at Damian’s apartment all night, were they?

* * *

Happened that they were. And they did, and all three of them woke up the next morning with a hungry cry from Lily and a crooked column from falling asleep on chairs, as comfortable as Damian’s furniture were. It wasn’t the worst part of it at all. The worst part was definitely when, from that night on, Richard nominated Damian as Lily’s official babysitter. He called official favorite uncle, actually, but Damian was too smart to see the truth behind the false compliment.

(Todd, on the other hand, was much less perceptive when he said Damian entranced Lily with his Demon Spawn’s powers to beat him and Drake into the favorite uncle position. Damian didn’t know they were in a competition at all, but it felt great to win, anyway, even if it was for fake purposes.)

It was wonderful for Barbara and Dick, though, because they finally had someone they could really confide their baby girl to - from super villain's threats more so, not only for changing diapers - and be able to enjoy free nights or afternoons once in a while by themselves, which it seemed to them that it hasn’t happened in forever.

Damian tried to deny every time, with a simple statement of “I’m not a babysitter, Grayson”, that melted away with pleads of trust, and family, and _look at how calm she is when she’s with you, it’s like another baby_.

She was, indeed. And if somewhere on his path of being a superhero Damian made an oath of protection and got himself into that mostly dysfunctional family’s dynamics, he might’ve as well live it up to it the most efficient way he could.

He had Lily on his apartment one afternoon in which Richard asked for a few hours that he could take Barbara out for lunch, holding her up in his arms near a baby basket Barbara bought specifically to leave at his place - totally unasked for, Damian should’ve add. There was a familiar movement outside his window, and barely any time to say a word before Jon was barking in,

“Don’t you answer your phone? I’ve been trying to reach you for-”, he stopped, his gaze quickly falling from Damian to Lily’s rosy face, then to the baby basket on the table, then to the baby play mat on the left corner of Damian’s living room - that one Damian bought himself, and he made no comment at Barbara’s smiling face as she saw it.

Jon frowned. “I’m… confused.”

“That’s Lily”, Damian answered the unspoken question. Lily’s eyes were big and curious about the sudden unseen person in front of them. “Grayson’s daughter”.

“ _Oh_ ”, Jon exclaimed, then, and his expression changed in a second from puzzled to grandly excited. Damian didn’t know how it happened without straining any facial muscles. “I haven’t met her yet!”

Jon approached them, having to bend himself just enough for his eyes to be on Lily’s level - and possibly on Damian’s chest level too, but he wasn’t commenting on that. “She’s so adorable”. Then he reached out a hand to touch her face and spoke, on a voice mimicking a baby talk that Damian didn’t understand why people insisted on using, since he knew an absolute amount of zero babies that effectively talked that way, “Who is the cutest little baby?”

Lily retracted a bit into Damian’s chest at the intrusion of her personal space and Jon smiled wider at her gesture,

"Of course I will be fine here, it looks so comfy on uncle Damian's arms".

Damian lifted one eyebrow, because what was _that_ supposed to mean?

“Do you want to hold her?”, he asked instead, and saw Jon raising his gaze back at him with blatant excitement.

“Can I?”

Practically speaking, Jon was one of the very few people Damian could feel unconcerned of entrusting his baby niece to. For a start, if he actually dropped her he still had the super speed to hold her back before she could hit the floor. Besides that technicality, Damian wasn’t so sure how _Lily_ would behave, though. He handed her over to Jon a little cautious that she would suddenly start crying, but when Jon jumped her lightly on his arms, opening a big, blinding grin, Lily actually giggled back in delight like he was the most amusing thing she had ever seen on her six months of life.

 _Of course_.

Damian took the chance of having his arms free again to turn his back to them and head to his notebook beside the baby basket, where he kept an eye on the track he put on Barbara and Richard without their knowledge, just to make sure Lily wasn’t an early orphan like it was the recurrent theme on the family. 

“She has…”, Jon started to say, and Damian cut him before he finished the thought,

“Barbara’s eyes. I know”.

Lily made a joyful noise, possibly from Jon jumping her a little higher.

“Do you think you’ll have one, someday?”

And Damian raised his head from the computer to look at Jon when he heard the question, to find him staring back with genuine interest. Lily quietly started to pull Jon’s cape with her tiny, chubby fingers to put it in her mouth.

“Eyes?”, Damian countered, sarcastically.

Jon rolled his own. “A baby”.

In all of his twenty-four years of life, Damian never really invested any thought on this. First of all, for a baby he would need beforehand some kind of relationship, and he wasn’t very much focused on that field either. Not unfocused like Richard, or Jason, or his father, even, but more unfocused like barely, almost never going out with people. He did have his shot on dating, or on one-night stands, but it was never something that really got him to consider forming the concept of family by the book.

He could see an importance, though. Damian _was_ raised on a genealogy that had both sides, as crazy as they were, very invested on values of family, by blood or not, and on creating legacies.

“I don’t know”, he answered, honestly, “Do you?”

“I kind of think I would want to”, Jon replied, staring back at Lily to pull his already drooled cape from her mouth, “I’d like to be a father as good as my father is”.

“Of course you would”, Damian retorted, because that sounded just like Jon. He gazed back at the computer screen and continued: “Do you think a quarter kryptonian genes will still have the same powers?”

“Oh, I don’t mean genetic ones”. Jon said, then, and Damian raised his eyes at him once again. “I could probably get tips from _your_ dad on adoption”.

Damian chuckled at that. “Don’t think you should. Grayson turned out fine, but the rest is a disaster”.

Jon laughed loud, and Damian saw Lily start to whine and move a bit restlessly, the way she usually did when she was starting to fall asleep but was fighting not to. He walked from the computer to her and Jon’s direction, and she stretched her small arms when she saw him approaching, silently asking him to pick her back up. Jon grinned and passed her to Damian,

“She does like you, doesn’t she?”

Damian adjusted her against his chest. “Apparently. I don’t have idea why”.

“Oh, I do”, Jon affirmed, giving Damian a smile as wide and tender as he gave Lily earlier. Damian just stared back at him in silence, and in a sudden the easiness and familiarity he usually had with Jon’s presence gave way to a thickness in the air that was both palpable and sort of suffocating, like a pre-announce of something that he should do or say, but didn’t know what, exactly.

“What did you come here to tell me, anyway?”, he asked, then, and it _felt_ like the wrong thing. Possibly not only to him, even, because Jon’s smile turned into an audible, long sigh, and he took his while to answer,

“Nevermind. It was not that important”. When Damian raised one eyebrow in doubt, he explained, “I have an essay for college this week and thought you could help me out, with that smart brain of yours and whatnot. I don’t want to fail my last year”. Damian was about to make a snarky comment about that, including Jon’s acknowledgement of his intelligence, but Jon didn’t let him as he continued, “I have time yet. Just…”, he stopped for a moment, like searching for the right words to use next, “Got a little worried that you didn’t answer me since the beginning of the week”.

It was true. Occupied with babysitting Lily - or being her favorite uncle, whatever - he did ignore a text from Jon at the beginning of the week that said _need to talk to you. call me when you have some time?_ To be fair, he barely had any time at all. Then again, did he really talk to Jon _every week_ to make one week missing that odd?

“Call me later”, he settled for saying. “I’ll answer”.

Jon laughed lightly, and the sound dissipated the previously installed weird atmosphere for a bit.

“Will do”.

With as much as a goodbye, Jon was already out the window. Damian turned his attention to a sleeping Lily on his arms, putting her gently on the baby basket, careful not to wake her up, before grabbing his phone discarded on the desk. A lot of missed calls from Jon that day until the time he barged into his apartment. When he opened the messages screen, the one saying _need to talk to you. call me when you have some time?_ was still there, unanswered. Damian scrolled back up to a bunch of other messages from earlier weeks, sometimes sharing suspicious informations about criminals, sometimes just Jon telling something incredibly random from his college days or his family’s antics. All of them got an answer or another, _every week_.

Worse yet, Damian noticed, basically every _day_.

Damian frowned at his own phone like it could give him answers for questions he didn’t know how to formulate yet.

* * *

Damian _hated_ Dollotrons. He didn’t know Professor Pyg was behind a weird disappearance of children from Gotham’s hospitals until he found his small army of ugly automatons. Damian hated them most not because he saw them as a considerable threat - which he didn’t - but because they were erratic, and mind controlled, and barely resembled living animals, so he always felt himself lose a bit of his restraint when knocking their heads against walls.

He saw Professor Pyg run away by the backdoor, classically, leaving his experiments behind to deal with Robin. About fifteen of them were already down, and Damian was dealing with the last three ones standing between him and his real target when his communicator beeped.

Damian pressed his ear piece as he hit another automaton with a wooden bar. Two to go.

“Richard, I’m busy”.

There was silence from the other side of the line for so long that Damian thought he was dutifully heard and Richard hung up already. He wouldn’t be so lucky,

“Even for Lily?”, he listened to Dick arguing, the pleading tone Damian came to know so well the past few weeks, “Your favorite niece?”

Damian averted a punch the Dollotron tried to give him up front. So stupid. He grabbed its arm and twisted it back, hearing it crack. When the Dollotron fell from the attack, Damian elbowed the back of its neck and left it unconscious. One to go.

“I’m _busy_ ”, he reinforced.

More seconds of silence passed by until he heard Dick again, “Are you needing help?”

“ _No_ ”, Damian answered, taxative, because he didn’t need help fighting creepy Frankenstein's pieces. He saw the last Dollotron grab an axe Professor Pyg left on the floor and breathed out a swear word. _Great_ timing. “Look”, he started, and swinged away from a first assault, “Call Jon. Lily’s okay with him”.

“Superboy?”, Richard’s voice was quick this time, also sounding very much confused. “When did he even meet Lily?”

“He was at my place when-”, the Dollotron tried another blow of his badly maneuvered axe at Damian; he stopped midway his sentence and completed, incisive, “It doesn’t matter, all right? Just call him”.

“He was at your place when _what?_ ”, and Richard’s emphasys had a whole new tone then, distinctly different from the surprised questioning one before. Damian understood the insinuation pretty well. He rolled his eyes behind his mask as Dick spoke with fake innocence, “I’m curious now”.

“I’m not biting your bait”. Damian answered. He managed to took the axe out of the Dollotron’s hand, that went flying behind, far from its reach. “If you leave her at his place I can fetch her in a few hours”.

He punched the last Dollotron down, internally rejoicing his victory, set to finally go after Professor Pyg, when he heard Richard reply,

“Fine then, loverboy”, and Damian wanted to _murder_ him because the end word resounded on his ear so much that he lost the amount of concentration he needed to notice the Dollotron he knocked with the wooden bar get up from behind, axe in hand. Damian turned a second too late from impending the blade of cutting his arm. 

“ _Shut up_ , Grayson”, he grunted, feeling a small sting of pain on the open wound. Perhaps he did imagine Dick’s face for a second when he advanced over the Dollotron and punched it on its guts. 

Richard had the nerve to laugh on the other end of the call.

“Ok, I’ll trust you on this”. Then, when Damian thought he had indeed _finally_ hung up, he added after a second, “You know I’m joking, right? But if you want me not to, I’m always here for you”.

Damian was about to ask _for what?_ when the call ended.

* * *

Took a bit longer than usual to drag Professor Pyg’s sorry ass back to Arkham Asylum. Mostly because Damian was _distracted_ , all thanks to stupid Richard and his equally stupid, big mouth. He should rephrase what he told Jon before, there was absolutely no one his father adopted that turned out remotely ok; all of them were a disaster in a way or another.

Now not only he had an unnecessary cut on his arm, he felt oddly over conscious of going to Jon’s place for reasons he didn’t even _understand_. This was _Jon_ , for crying out loud, the person that he met, that he quarrelled with, that he had long, sometimes too meaningful conversations, and thereof called his friend for so many years; it made absolutely no sense leaving Damian uncomfortable at all.

Yet he was. But he was also Damian Wayne, and he always tried his best to have an excelling control of his emotions. He parked Redbird on a Metropolis’ alley to not catch unwanted attention, climbed the side of the already familiar building, and sat on the opened window sill.

“Look who’s here”. Damian barely had time to say a word when he listened to Jon speaking on that unexplainable baby voice again. _Of course._ Super hearing and all that. “It’s your rescue one man army”.

Lily indeed looked over when Jon pointed at the window, but Damian’s gaze got locked on that oddly domestic overall picture. Jon seemed to be enjoying himself with Lily, large smile on his face that turned soft and tender, and the image of him happy and simply unconcerned, no powerful villain or threat on his life for the moment, made Damian’s chest clench under a warmth of something he was very resistant of calling _fondness_ , but it couldn’t have any other name.

 _Oh_ , he thought, mind rearing back at Richard looking at Barbara on a big, wide screen at Batcave at what felt like decades ago. That was _bad_. Really, awfully bad.

Damian didn’t move from the window, like the world as he knew would shatter entirely if he did as much as enter the apartment. He simply stayed there, looking over Jon’s also familiar small room as if it could have something he hadn’t yet seen, then back to Jon himself sitting on the bed while holding Damian’s niece.

“Did she cry?”, he heard his own voice asking from a distance.

“A bit”, Jon admitted, shaking a purple bat plushie that Damian guessed Richard brought along. Lily was distracted trying to grab it, because she was just about that age of beginning to discover and recognize things. “I guess I don’t have your baby whispering powers”. Jon smirked as Damian rolled his eyes; he surely didn’t want to know what kind of bullshit Dick was on about when he talked to Jon earlier. “But she calmed down after a while”.

“Well”, Damian stated, “Her _parents_ can’t even do that much”.

Jon laughed at that. “I’m sure it’s not because of me. She’s growing old and changing habits”.

So Damian finally jumped from the window sill and into the room. The world didn’t shatter like he considered it to; weirdly it felt the exactly same as it had always been, like so many similar scenarios he lived before. Perhaps that was a most worrying thought, however, because who would know for how long he just didn’t notice that his regular friendship wasn't regular at all. He approached Lily, bending his knees and lowering in front of Jon’s bed when he realized her suspicious glance followed by a whine, as if about to cry. Damian quickly took off his eye mask and her face slowly calmed down,

“She doesn’t like when I’m wearing a mask”, he commented.

Jon smiled, “I can understand that”. Then, as his eyes left Lily to look closely at Damian almost sitting before him, he frowned,

“Are you hurt?”

Damian followed Jon’s gaze to his arm. Oh, yeah, he totally forgot about that for a second. It was red and bloody, but it wasn’t deep. It would be completely healed in a few weeks, possibly not even letting a scar to count. He dismissed it with his hand, “It’s nothing. I lost my concentration for a bit”.

Jon arched an eyebrow. “That’s rare. Who were you fighting?”

And that question made all the discomfort crawl back under Damian’s skin. He could taste the embarrassment knotting on his throat, and he didn’t like that feeling one bit. “It was Richard’s fault, actually. He was saying…”, a lot of absurd insinuations, which were also, maybe, very true, “ _things_ ”, Damian settled for.

The big problem was that what Damian settled for wasn’t detailed enough to satiate one’s curiosity. He wouldn’t make such a peasant mistake under other circumstances. Jon frowned.

“What kind of things?”

Damian breathed out, because there was no use trying to save his current situation. “Stupid things”.

Jon eyed him, a small frown of suspicion still on his face. He spent some seconds longer than usual in silence, and Damian thought that he would press the matter further when he opened his mouth to speak again. Instead, he said, in a joking tone, amused smile on his lips,

“He called me and said you asked to leave Lily here because you wanted an excuse to see me”.

Damian didn’t know if he felt more bothered, or murderous, or embarrassed, or an ugly combination of all that. It was an awful emotion, either way, because it was new and he was having a hard time controlling it, like all the effort he focused on earlier of mastering himself was now a crumbling mess falling at his feet. To be sincere, he expected that Richard had said something equally embarrassing to Jon as he did to him, but actually hearing it out loud made it worse.

“See?”, Damian commented, then, gaze fixed on Lily and not, in any circumstance, on Jon, “I have a stupid brother”.

Jon laughed. “I know”, and Damian was glad that he did, for a brief second, until Jon completed, “I told him you never needed an excuse to see me”.

So there it was again. The heavy atmosphere, the suffocation. Damian felt his throat close up when he tried to swallow the uneasiness. He glanced back up at Jon, just to find that unexplainable blue eyes staring back at him with something akin to determination and _fear_ , it seemed, like Damian could break something very fragile into a million pieces in a second. He didn’t understand quite well where that conversation was going to, but it felt like dangerous territory.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t his voice that resounded next, “You know that, don’t you?”

Damian first reaction was to say that he didn’t. He didn’t know, didn’t understand quite well what was going on there. But he was Damian Wayne. And if an excelling control of his emotions was not what he could humanely get, an extraordinary perception of things ran easily on his veins.

He noticed things. He heard them, he _catalogued_ them inside of his brain.

_it looks so comfy on uncle Damian's arms_

_oh, I do_

_I can understand that_

_you never needed an excuse to see me_

Damian breathed in. He was about to answer what Jon deserved, the truth, the _yes, I know_ that would led into facing it, and fronting it, and maybe detangling the knot that formed on his chest once and for all, when his ear piece beeped for the second time that night.

He groaned so loud Lily turned her curious eyes from her toy to him.

“ _Richard_ ”, Damian acknowledged, tapping his communicator on, hoping his tone was passing the pent up frustration he felt entirely.

“You ok there, D.?”, he heard Dick question, a bit worried, so that maybe his intentions were read in a totally different way.

“I’m fine”, Damin toned down. “I’m already at Metropolis, with Jon and Lily”.

Jon merely looked at him for a second before going back to playing with Lily. She seemed already so tired that her attempts at grabbing her toy started to get slower, eyelids descending as if she was going to sleep any minute now. Damian focused back on Richard’s voice on his ear,

“Did Lily behave with Jon?"

“Yes”, he stared back at her eyes closing, so calm as if being alive itself wasn’t a constant danger that would get you on guard every hour of the day. Damian never felt so reposeful in his life, as far as he can remember; maybe when he was her age he was already alert and ready to hurt anybody that got as close as he and Jon were now. But then again, he didn’t want that kind of life for anyone else, especially not for his baby niece. “She’s fine”, he concluded.

Richard hummed in acknowledgment on the other side of the line,

"Did _you_ behave with Jon?"

Damian grunted. He _hated_ Richard, he could swear. He looked up to Jon for a second to make sure Dick didn’t speak loud enough for him to hear - not that it would matter much, with super hearing and all that - but he seemed oblivious, sonmely focussed on Lily’s almost sleeping figure.

“I’m not answering that”, he said, and heard Dick laughing in response.

“I’ll take that as a no, then”.

He could send Richard to hell, but it was possibly impolite to do in front of his daughter, so Damian just ignored it. “I’ll bring Lily over, she’s basically sleeping already”.

Dick was still laughing when Damian cut off the communication. It was good, in a sense, getting rid of Richard’s teasing, but it was bad that the room fell silent again and there was only him, and Jon, and dizzy Lily, that couldn’t say a word to save him. Damian was very aware that he didn’t answer the question Jon made him earlier; he was also very aware that he was deflecting it when he spoke,

“Thank you for taking care of her”.

“No problem”, Jon retorted, and if he felt bothered by Damian’s evasiveness, he didn’t let it show. “She’s very sweet.”

Then Damian got up again, taking Lily in his arms, careful not to disrupt her sleep or to bring her too close to his bloodied sleeve. Jon possibly noticed his concern when he said next,

“You should take care of that soon”, he motioned to Damian’s cut, tilting his head to have a better look from the side, “To avoid getting infected”.

Of course Damian knew that. And of course _Jon_ knew that Damian knew that, so the words were possibly only spoken to evade the complete quietness. Perhaps the air was as thick and uncomfortable to Jon as it was to him, so Damian was quick to just hum in agreement, turn around, and leave.

* * *

It had been possibly three days more than a week since Damian was last in Metropolis, at that night when he fought Professor Pyg and had to retreat Lily from Jon’s place. Things were quite very regular; Jon still texted him everyday with absolute nonsenses, Lily was indeed growing up so fast with no troubles to sleep anymore - but Richard and Barbara still let her with him sometimes, because they insisted she actually really liked him, and seven months was the age babies started to recognize loved ones faces - and people still made a small fuss when he appeared in public spaces as Damian Wayne.

The black, expensive Mercedes-Benz he parked in front of Metropolis University’s gate probably didn’t help maintaining a low profile visit either, but blame him for liking to drive on confort. The students leaving university ground after classes all stopped to spare him a look or two, and he heard a few whispers of recognition as he stepped out of the car, even with sunglasses, and reclined against the vehicle’s door to wait for the familiar figure he saw coming down the stairs a few seconds later.

Jon looked genuinely surprised, then stared at him with an unrecognizable intention. He undid his startled face, headed into Damian’s direction and spoke, the lowest he could,

“I heard the whispers about Wayne on the front door, but thought people were just hallucinating”.

“I do hope people don’t hallucinate about me very often”, Damian countered, making Jon chuckle. When the amusement subdued, Jon looked around at the prying eyes - and yes, perhaps Damian was filling up his university life with a lot of gossip for the rest of the week -, got a bit closer, and tried to speak with the most amount of privacy a public space allowed them,

"You wouldn't appear like that if it was a hero type of emergency, so what is it, then?”, he questioned, giving no time for a reply as he completed, “Is it Lily again?"

Instead of answering, Damian backed away from the car’s door and turned around, walking to the side of the driver's seat. “Get in”, he said, midway, and saw Jon rolling his eyes.

"When are you going to lose the habit of bossing me around?", Jon complained, but as Damian closed the door on his side, Jon opened the other one to get in, anyway.

“Never”.

He saw Jon’s mouth opening to possibly offer a snarky reply, but closing it the moment he entered the car and saw Lily’s round and cute face on the safety chair in the back, along with Titus, sitting excitedly beside her and occupying most of the space.

“Oh, hi, Lily”, Jon greeted, unbearable baby tone again, “And Titus”. Lily giggled at him when Damian started the engine, as Jon played hide and seek of his face with both of his hands.

“So”, Jon said, after a while, turning front and staring at the street Damian was driving in to, “where are you kidnapping me to?”

“We’re taking Lily to a park”. Damian responded, eyes on the direction, and Jon raised an eyebrow. “She’s sitting up alone already, even from being laid down. I guess she picked up Grayson’s circus genes”.

Jon smiled, “Or maybe she’s just so smart like Barbara”. He turned his face once more to grin at Lily, then back to Damian again, “So you want company on your daycare playtime today?”

He knew Jon was teasing him, and he felt the urge to correct that he wasn’t a babysitter, once and for all, but what he actually answered was,

“Something like that”.

* * *

Titus loved to run around the open field, and its enthusiasm, on the other hand, made _Lily_ happy, giggling in joy as she rolled on her tummy and sat by herself between Damian and Jon. Titus also picked up a frisbee that Jon tossed to him a few times, and Lily had no problem befriending every other baby circulating at the park - she was indeed Richard’s daughter, no doubt. Damian bought them food a few hours later, that they ate sitting at the park's grass, although Damian did complain that he hated having lunch without a proper table and cutlery.

Both Lily and Titus were quickly exhausted, clearly, wasting too much energy too fast, so when the afternoon ended they were sleeping on the back of the black Mercedes-Benz as Damian drove them to drop Jon at his apartment first before heading Lily and himself to their respective homes.

“Thank you for the ride”, Jon whispered when they got to his building, quiet to not disturb Lily, taking off the seatbelt. Damian motioned outside with his head and stepped out of the car as well, circling around the hood until he stopped in front of Jon, who just gazed at him in silence for a while. A silence that felt like a third person, the same heavy one that seemed to absorb them, inescapably, lately, ever since Damian took notice that it existed.

He saw Jon’s throat move as he swallowed up what he possibly wanted to say for real to speak, instead, large smile on his lips, but weak vigour on his voice, “I had fun today”. Then he had the tentatively normal teasing sparkle on his eyes as he continued, “Don't know why you needed me at all, since _you're_ the baby expert, but-"

So Jon stopped himself. Damian didn’t say a word as he saw his eyes widening, little by little, as if in slow motion. He looked like he had an absolutely unimaginable epiphany, and his voice was hesitant when he said:

“Damian”. Like that, like it was a beginning and an end of a sentence altogether. He frowned just enough to demonstrate that he was possibly still in doubt that he was going to ask what he did, but then again, “...Did you just take me on a date?"

Damian didn’t answer right away. He tilted his chin, the way he used to do when he was being arrogant and stubborn, but it was possibly only a reflex for being vulnerable, because he retorted next,

“Never needed an excuse to see you, right?"

Because he didn’t, really, and if he noticed and catalogued a lot of what Jon said or how he moved and acted around Damian for eleven years now, so probably the reverse was also true, wasn't it? Eleven years weren’t eleven days, and Damian, almost unnoticed, had let so much of his heart in Jon’s hands throughout this entire time. 

Jon didn’t hold back a sudden laughter, that sounded shocked and delighted at the same time. He seemed lost for words for a brief moment before he grinned and said,

“Come here, you complicated person”.

He reached both hands for Damian’s face, pulled him over, and kissed him.

And at the time Jon’s lips were on his, and his mouth was warm and _diving_ against his own, opening and moving with desperation and pent up desire, Damian had to grasp Jon’s waist to have something to keep him solid and steady. All of the unfocus of his previous shots at dating or one-night stands suddenly cleared away and made sense. So that was why it never had that much appeal to him, because of course it had to be Jon all along.

 _Of course_.

When they broke apart, Jon’s fingers were crawled in his hair, and Damian didn’t mind the mess they were probably making. Jon’s breath was raspy and fast like he wasn’t inhaling that much air, all energy left focused on speaking, then:

“I'd invite you over if it wasn't for Titus and Lily".

Damian’s gaze was concentrated on Jon’s lips forming words more than on the words themselves, so he leaned over to kiss him again and only didn’t forget what the answer was for because he _so_ wanted it to be different, “Another time”.

“Yeah”, Jon smiled, his heavy breath reaching Damian’s mouth in warmth, “I'll definitely charge you for that”.

So Damian kissed Jon’s smile just once more, just because he was there, and he could, and it shouldn’t probably be so earth shaking, but it _was_. He never felt quite like this before; it was a sort of adrenaline so distinguished from the one he was used getting from fighting crime, like it fulfilled him with a grounding excitement instead of an overly watchful one.

That was when he heard a whine, so he forcefully ended the kiss to glance at the car window, seeing Lily made a face while trying to move around in her sleep, trapped by the baby safety seat belt.

"She's jealous”, Jon joked, grinning, and Damian realized he still had a firm grip on his waist, “She totally wants your full attention".

Damian snorted, "Stop analysing my niece".

Jon laughed harder. "Overprotective uncle. I'm scared for her adolescence".

Damian shrugged, but one corner of his lips turned up in a half smile, "She'll be fine by her own by then. I’ll teach her self defense fighting techniques”.

“Of course you will”, Jon mocked, but instead of the usual eye rolling that came along with it, he only smiled fondly at Damian. His finger were still on the back of Damian’s neck and he lightly scratched his nape, the end of his hair, until one particular place made Damian shiver.

“I have to go”, he stated, then, as if saying it out loud would make his resolution stronger.

“I know”, Jon retorted, kissing Damian just one more time before detaching himself from him completely. Perhaps Damian still held him a millisecond longer before turning back around and getting into the car. Jon leaned down the opened window to whisper,

“Bye, Lily, see you later”.

And Damian just stared at him, all that previously heavy tension gone from his features, a sort of contentment glow in his eyes, wide spreaded smile. Damian was kind of ruined, because Jon was _gorgeous_.

"You're going to break your face if you keep grinning like that", he said instead.

Jon laughed. “I’m happy”. Then he tapped the car’s door lightly with his fingers and completed, "Now get out of here before I drag you out again to kiss you some more".

Damian rolled his eyes and turned the key on the engine. When the motor made the starting noise, Jon lowered his head quickly back on the window to say,

“Also, Damian”, Damian turned his face to look at him, “You looked _so hot_ at my university's gate today, you have no idea". Damian still didn’t understand why he surrounded himself by so many people that liked to make his life miserable by doing embarrassing comments about him. He also remembered the type of gaze Jon offered him that morning and, well, so _that_ was what that was about. Jon openly laughed at his discomfort, then completed in total glee, “It feels great to be able to say this".

“ _Goodbye_ , Jonathan”. Damian retorted, and much as heard Jon’s amused laughter fade in the distance as the car moved front.

* * *

In fifteen minutes drive Damian’s phone lightened up on the car panel with an incoming new message from Jon,

_miss you already_

That sappy bastard. Damian rolled his eyes, and barely had time to look front again when another one appeared,

_how am I even supposed to sleep tonight?_

Damian stopped the car at a red sign and reached over to type a reply,

_I'm not babysitting you too._

He got back a lot of laughing emojis, then two messages appeared in a sequence,

_what a shame_

_i'd love for you to take me to bed_

Damian got so startled he stepped on the brake instead of the accelerator as the traffic sign went back to green. The person in the car behind his pressed the horn with some violence at the sudden movement, and Damian got himself together to drive _properly_ as he typed a new message, even if he knew he shouldn't while the car was in motion,

_If that's how you're going to text me now I'll ignore you, Kent_

A reply from Jon didn’t take long to appear,

_hahahaha, of course you won't ;)_

And Damian really thought they would settle at that. But when he glanced over at the phone screen it indicated that Jon was typing another message. It lasted a long minute, as if he was composing an extensive text instead of a quick sentence, to then disappear completely. It appeared and disappeared another two times, and some moments of nothing, until more messages came,

_jokes aside, I believe Lily can sense that you are an aristocratic arrogant and rude_

Damian made a pissed face at that.

_but then again, that you are also the most loyal and caring person I know, even if you try to hide it most of the time. I'll still say that to your face someday, when I feel less intimidated by how much I like you_

The car came to a stop again. Damian read what Jon just wrote him a few times over, knowing that he probably should offer some sort of reply. He sighed. Then he reached for his phone again and sent,

_That's almost as bad. Focus on your sleep_

Afterwards, some seconds too many later, as if he just couldn’t control his own fingers, he completed,

_I love you_

It didn’t have to mean something big and overwhelming like what people wrote books and poems about, or sound like a great confession of sorts, because it was just an honest, plain statement of truth; and if Damian Wayne wasn't one for compliments, flirting or overall romance, he was one for honesty, even when it confronted people. Damian did love him, and he obviously never said it, not as much as a friend, not for those eleven years.

Almost a whole minute passed with Jon’s complete silence to that. Damian thought briefly if he managed to go to sleep, albeit considerably early yet, and perhaps even pondered if he should just exclude the message before Jon got to actually read it, when a reply came,

_I love you too_

Damian took one hand out of the wheel to press his fingers against his temple for a brief while. He didn’t think much of it when he wrote it first, but when he read it back it did feel big, and overwhelming, and maybe a great confession of sorts. He exhaled loudly, then heard Lily make a mindless sound at the back of the car.

“I know”, he said to her, and he possibly _was_ losing his senses because, although not using baby voice, he was still talking to someone who couldn’t understand a word, defying thereof basic principles of linguistics, “Your father will never let me live with this”.

Titus barked in what Damian saw as an agreement as he finally arrived at Richard’s place. He parked at the sidewalk, and was about to open the car’s door when his phone lightened up with another message from Jon,

_if that's how you're going to text me now, keep it coming_

Damian chuckled at the screen. Well, he thought, Richard could tease all he wanted.

It was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> I never did so much research on baby’s habits or baby related english vocabulary. Now Google probably thinks I’m pregnant, I’ll wait for capitalism trying to sell me diapers or something.


End file.
